Thanks to you, millions of little girls are going to school

Although she spent less than 6 hours in Afghanistan, Laura Bush evidently ran out of Afghans worth speaking with, and decided to hang out with American troops instead. She told them, “Thanks to you, millions of little girls are going to school in this country.” Great, they’re like the world’s most heavily armed school crossing guards.

Follow-up: Juan Cole says that the reason Allawi stalked out of the National Assembly after the cameras were turned off and the press expelled was that his choice for Speaker was rejected for having been too close to Saddam.

The NYT has a story, “U.S. Helped to Prepare the Way for Kyrgyzstan’s Uprising.” The US supplied paper and a printing press and money to an opposition newspaper, and broadcast its stories on the local Radio Free Europe. All relatively mild activities, and Akayev was certainly on my list of Top 40 Dictators Who Need to Be Sent Into Exile, but it still amounts to the US considering it its right to undermine willy nilly any government it dislikes. The difference between this and the covert actions which overthrew the governments of Arbenz, Mossadegh and Allende is one of degree only. It will also give other dictators the ability to paint their oppositions as American puppets, in much the same way that Robert Mugabe is currently campaigning in Zimbabwe’s fake elections as if Tony Blair were running against him.

Also, the NYT puff piece on these activities was pretty obviously spoon-fed to the Paper of Record by someone in State or the CIA.